This adorable clay pot love bug candy dish is super easy to make and sure to capture your heart. The Valentine’s Day Terracotta bug craft uses two different sized clay pots and a few inexpensive craft supplies.

Use it as a centerpiece filled with conversation hearts for the highlight of your party table. It says “I love you” in style.

I love making craft projects with clay pots. (See my clay pot snowman here.) The material just soaks up paint, making the drying time quick and normally I only need one coat to cover them. Check out my post for Tootsie Pop Flowers for another fun Valentine’s Day project.

Terra cotta pots have a shape that can be transformed into all sorts of cute decor items. I made a clay pot pumpkin candy dish for Thanksgiving and loved the way it turned out.

Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, I thought I’d make a clay pot love bug candy dish to hold everyone’s favorite Valentine’s Day candy – conversation hearts. Since these hearts have “love bug” type messages, they go perfectly with my sweet critter.

Making this Terracotta Bug Craft

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This clay pot love bug candy dish starts by making the love critter first. I used a pink heart shaped candy dish to finish the project.

As with most of my projects, I started by raiding my craft bins for the supplies to use in the project and then embellished as I went along, when I saw what else it needed to look “even cuter!!” I started with two clay pots and some inexpensive Dollar Store supplies. I also ended up adding some pink raffia and a few more red glitter heart stickers and some black paint as the project progressed.

The first step was to paint the clay pots with acrylic craft paint. I used white for the bottom pot (3 3/4″) and added a few drops of red to the white paint for a pink top pot (1 3/4″). Once the paint had dried, I painted the face of the love bug using the pattern below as a guide.

The antenna is made from a red pipe cleaner. Snip off a piece about 5 inches long. Make a U shaped loop and twirl the ends of each antenna. The wings are made from the large red foam hearts which have tiny pink dots added on the edges and a pink glitter heart attached in the center. (For another fun project using the foam hearts, be sure to check out my Valentine’s Day Heart Tree. It’s super easy and pretty to display.

The next step was to hot glue the tiny red pom poms on the cheeks of the love bug and the antenna on the top of her head. The head is done and the bug is ready to be assembled now.

Hot glue the head to the top of the body of the love bug and glue the two wings on the back of the body, as well.

This clay pot love bug is cute, but any self respecting female wants a few nice clothes, right? I wrapped the piece of red grosgrain ribbon around her neck and tied it in a bow and tacked it in place with hot glue.

Then I used the red glitter stickers on the bottom of the body and also gave her a pink heart for her chest. All that was left was her pink raffia hair and she was done.

Tada! Look how cute this adorable terra cotta bug craft turned out! Imagine how sweet she would look in a little girl’s room!

Displaying this clay pot love bug

This cute critter looks just fine on her own as part of a table center piece or as a stand alone decoration on any side table. But I had something more in mind. I wanted to turn the love bug into something more functional than decorative.

Making a clay pot love bug candy dish.

I decided to turn this sweet critter into a clay pot love bug candy dish. The first step was to trim a craft stick and paint it white. Hot glue the painted stick to the bottom of the love bug and then add more glue to the bottom of the stick and attach it to the candy dish.

I used a Dollar store pink heart shaped candy dish positioned the stick forward of center. It gave me a bit more room to add candy to the dish. You’ll need a liberal amount of glue of the love bug will be a bit top heavy.

Then I filled the dish with conversation hearts (with love bug style sayings on them). I love the way the glitter hearts match the shape of the candy!

This adorable clay pot love bug candy dish will be the hit of your Valentine’s day party table. To make this clay pot love bug candy dish into a centerpiece, I hot glued a Dollar Store Wooden Glitter Butterfly cut out behind the candy dish. This also gives the candy dish a bit more stability too!

Your guest will love this cute critter, you don’t have to tell the guests that it was made with a few Dollar Store crafts supplies and a hour of your time!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small commission from the sale, but the price is the same for you. I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Hi! I am Carol and I love to garden and cook (with a bit of DIY thrown in for fun.)
I come from a long line of gardeners and have always loved to experiment with food and recipes.
Join me as I cook and garden my way through life.

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